Legal working paper: Is It Science Yet? Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution

Ed Brayton announced:

Steven Gey, Matthew Brauer and Barbara Forrest have published a new working paper on SSRN, Is It Science Yet? Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution.

Some quotes of interest:

Intelligent design theory relies on a series of misunderstandings and misrepresentations of evolutionary theory, and the multiple flaws in the structure and details of intelligent design theory render it irredeemably flawed as science.

My thoughts exactly and the view of more and more people as well.

The only method that ID advocates have devised for identifying these objects is in the form of a negative argument by elimination. That is, they rely on the false assertion that either some current naturalistic model for the origin of an object is correct, or that their “intelligent design” inference is. This negative argumentation has substantial problems, not least of which is that it relies upon a false dichotomy. Even if all currently known mechanisms for an object’s origin are not convincing, other undiscovered scenarios are certainly possible.

The 'God of the Gaps' argument is both scientifically and religiously speaking devastating.

In Dembski’s filter “design” does not have its usual meaning, but rather is defined negatively as “the set-theoretic complement of the disjunction of regularity-or-chance.”290 This means that design is by default anything that is not the product of either regularity or chance.

Del Ratzsch pointed this one out...

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Legal Opinion: Why It's Unconstitutional to Teach "Intelligent Design" in the Public Schools, as an Alternative to Evolution

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Dover, Pennsylvania School Board. The ACLU argues that the School Board violated the Constitution's Establishment Clause by mandating that students in public school biology classes be taught the theory of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution.

Proponents of intelligent design--which is closely related to what is sometimes called "creationism"--point to gaps in the fossil record and other uncertainties to argue that evolution by natural selection cannot explain the emergence of new species. They contend instead that an intelligent agent must have been guiding the course of life on Earth.
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Evolution opponents have recently scored political victories outside Dover, Pennsylvania as well. In Cobb County, Georgia, public school textbooks discussing evolution must now contain a disclaimer warning that evolution is "a theory, not a fact." That policy, too, is the subject of pending litigation.

And the November election returns in Kansas have given critics of evolution a majority on that state's school board. It is only a matter of time until Kansas mandates the teaching of alternatives to evolution.

Yet Supreme Court precedent holds that state-sponsored attacks on evolution in the public schools are unconstitutional. Why, then, are evolution opponents in Dover, Cobb County and Kansas, trying to change curricula? Aren't these efforts doomed to fail once they are challenged in court? Are the evolution opponents engaging in mere symbolic protest?

The surprising answer is: Perhaps not. That is because the leading Supreme Court decision, in the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard, contains an apparent loophole that evolution's critics may hope to exploit.

Aguillard appears to rest on the Justices' finding that the proponents of theories like intelligent design were subjectively motivated by religion. Accordingly, by keeping their religious motivation secret, proponents of the policies in Dover, Cobb County, and elsewhere may hope to evade the Aguillard decision.

However, as I argue below, this evasion should not succeed. Instead, the First Amendment should be construed to bar the mandatory teaching of intelligent design regardless of the purposes expressed by those imposing the mandate.

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